Pediatric Brain Tumors

Research

Mayo Clinic Cancer Center (MCCC) receives funding from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and is designated as a comprehensive cancer center — a recognition for an institution's scientific excellence and multidisciplinary resources focused on cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment. Mayo Clinic Cancer Center is one of only three cancer centers to receive a National Cancer Institute-sponsored Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant for brain cancer research.

Pediatric brain tumors are very different from adult brain tumors. Mayo Clinic pediatric hematology and oncology research programs are working to better understand how and why pediatric brain tumors develop and how to best stop their growth.

Research on new treatments

Mayo Clinic is also active in investigating and collaborating to develop new treatments:

• New technology to make the treatment of brain tumors even more precise.
• New types of chemotherapy agents to target just tumor cells.
• Drugs to cut off a tumor's blood supply.
• New agents that may interrupt tumor growth or seek out and kill brain tumor cells while reducing harm to normal cells.
• A way to use the body's immune system to fight cancer (immunotherapy) using materials made by the body or in a laboratory to boost, direct, or restore the body's natural defenses against disease.

Publications

See a list of publications by Mayo doctors on pediatric brain tumors on PubMed, a service of the National Library of Medicine.